The present disclosure relates to the sharing of telephone numbers used for tracking electronic devices.
Laptops, and increasingly other electronic devices such as cell phones, personal digital assistants (i.e. “PDAs”), smart phones (e.g. BlackBerry™, iPhone™), memory sticks, electronic books, personal media devices (e.g. iPod™), gaming devices, tablet computers and personal computers, are being remotely tracked so that they can be recovered in the event of theft. Such tracking may be effected by sending location information to a remote storage site or an email server via a wireless telephone connection and/or via the internet.
Proprietary information is routinely stored on electronic devices, and the need to protect such proprietary or sensitive data, and to recover such devices if they are lost or stolen, is self-evident. However, the use of telecommunications channels should be used efficiently in order to keep down the cost of tracking.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,164,666 to Bunn discloses a system and method for multiplexing wireless devices. In a form of TDMA (time division multiple access), multiple devices can share the same ESN (Electronic Serial Number) and MIN (Mobile Identification Number) by operating in turn on a single channel. A GPS clock may be used to synchronize all the devices.
U.S. Patent Application Publication Number 2008/0211670 discloses a system in which protected host devices can communicate with a monitoring center via two different cellular channels.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,625,457 to Raith discloses a system in which cellular telephones are automatically updated with different numbers to call, based on the detected location of the phone.